Dubious move to earn crypto copycats emerge in Vietnam
Hai Hoang was invited to join a ‘make love to make money’ project, a copy of the increasingly popular ‘move to earn’ crypto trend.
The Da Nang office worker said he is curious to know how the app works, but members rarely talk about it, mainly discussing the token price.
It is one of the many apps trying to replicate the success of the ‘move to earn’ trend, in which users spend a few hundred to a few thousand dollars to buy shoes and jog to earn cryptocurrencies.
The ways they reward users vary, and include driving, sleeping and even having sex.
But they have two things in common: few details are given out about how they operate, and participants are urged to invest as soon as possible to make the most profit.
Tran Dinh, executive member of the Vietnam Blockchain Association, said some crypto move to earn projects have succeeded, but many others have collapsed, while some are just scams, he warned.
Quan Ngoc, a move to earn game developer in HCMC said the dubious apps contribute nothing to the community, and merely create a bad image for the industry.
Online security tool ScamAdviser gave a sex to earn app, SexN, a low trust score, saying it could be a scam.
“We lowered the sexn.finance review score as we found several websites on the same server with a low trust score. Online scammers have a tendency to set up multiple malicious websites on one server, sometimes in the hundreds.”
Earlier a click to earn app called CryptoBike was accused of scamming users to the tune of $1.4 million.
SleepN, a sleep to earn app that attracted the crypto community’s attention, turned out to be a joke.
“Many apps are ponzi schemes in disguise, trying to scam new investors,” Dinh said.
Users should research the market to avoid dubious apps, analysts said.
In the past it was not uncommon for blockchain developers to stay anonymous, but many have decided to come out to demonstrate their projects’ legitimacy following many scams.
It is imperative that users find out about the development team before deciding to invest, Dinh said.
He pointed out that move to earn scams are not confined to Vietnam but also plague more developed markets like the U.S. and Europe.